Fight night
Performance by cculdesacc
Two professional fighters, five rounds with no rules and the audience that came striving to see this violent spectacle. For 20 minutes straight fighters were caught in a duel inside a dark basement right under a busy city street.
And not a single punch has landed. Everyone was waiting for the blood, but nobody knew that the fight would be “punchless”.
We prepared our viewer for the real professional fight creating a mystification around this act. Promo videos and posters were designed using found footage and video materials made during rehearsals. During the performance deception and frustration of the viewers became the main instrument we played with. Spectators came for the show, but left with a question:
“did I just come here to enjoy the violence?”
The whole play had a dynamic development due to elaborated choreography. Fighters started exchanging light jabs trying to feel the opponent and probing the ground to unleash the upcoming attack. Throughout the whole fight both fighters held an immense aggression towards each subsequently coming to an intense climax moment at the end of the 5th round. One of the fighters was standing in front of the other completely immobilized fighter. The other fighter was purposely making a series of super strong punches right next to his face and not landing any of them. Following this moment both fighters cuddled up in an embrace which put an end to this act and appeared as the only physical contact between the fighters throughout the whole spectacle.
Giant sound system hidden in a murk emitted infrasound waves possible for humans to experience only through the body vibration or resonance of the things around. During the performance multiple huge infrasound flashes were responsible for sustaining the tension and physically impacting the viewers.
fighter in blue Tornike Oniani
fighter in red Luka Wiqvadze
video editor Ilya Uvarov-Gaba
sound design (video) Dmitry Gudnichev
dop Anna Gudnicheva
light and sound Dmitry Ganyushkin
casting BESS Casting
trainer Gabriel Marichev
location Dust Tbilisi
gym Alpha Green Georgia